In a typical electrophotographic marking process, a photoconductive member is charged to a substantially uniform potential so as to sensitize the surface thereof. The charged portion of the photoconductive member is exposed to a light image of an original document being reproduced. Exposure of the charged photoconductive member selectively dissipates the charge thereon in the irradiated areas. This records an electrostatic latent image on the photoconductive member corresponding to the informational areas contained within the original document. After the electrostatic latent image is recorded on the photoconductive member, the latent image is developed by bringing a developer material into contact therewith. Generally, the developer material is made from toner particles adhering triboelectrically to carrier granules. The toner particles are attracted from the carrier granules to the latent image forming a toner powder image on the photoconductive member. The toner powder image is then transferred from the photoconductive member to a copy sheet. Heat is applied to the toner particles to permanently affix the powder image to the copy sheet.
The toner used in this marking process is generally supplied in bottles or cartridges where the replenisher bottle fits on a drive dog which rotates the bottle as toner is being fed from the bottle into a developer housing where it is mixed with carrier ready to be applied to a latent image to form the visible image that is eventually transferred to paper or other media. This general process is described in several patents including U.S. Pat. No. 6,505,006B1; U.S. Pat. No. 7,672,609; U.S. Pat. No. 7,676,183B2 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,720,416B2 all of which are incorporated by reference into the present invention.
The prior art bottles used in today's machines generally have two plastic parts assembled together, one portion (main body) is blow molded and the second part or end cap is an injected-molded component that is welded onto the blow-molded main body of the bottle. This end cap provides the means to drive the bottle and auger.
A rotating replenisher bottle with an integrated external auger is a low cost container for dispensing replenisher without relying on gravity feed. Prior art family drive such as a bottle with a round lobed feature on the bottle that fits into a similarly shaped cavity an a drive dog but, as noted, the feature is incompatible with the blow-molding process so an injection molded cap incorporating the feature is bonded to a blow-molded body section. The addition of an injection-molded part contributes significantly to the cost of the bottle. In designs not employing a mating drive interface as described above but rather a general or universal type drive interface, if the wrong type of toner is inserted, the bottle will still be driven and the system contaminated. What is desired is a low cost design that will drive only bottles with the appropriate toner type as encoded by the shape of a feature on the bottle.